tion,
but I can never lose the feeling that his right place is the wall of a
restaurant or a theater curtain. Still, since at the Palazzo Labia we
find him decorating a banqueting hall with a secular subject, all is
well.

But first to get in, for the Labia, once so sumptuous, is now the home
of a hundred poor families, and the daughter of the concierge whose duty
it is to display the frescoes prefers play to work. For twenty minutes I
waited in the gloomy, deserted hall while her father shuffles off in one
direction and her mother in another, both calling "Emma!" "Emma!" with
increasing degrees of fury. Small boys and girls joined in the hunt
until the neighbourhood had no other sound. At last the little slovenly
Emma was discovered, and having been well rated she fetched the key and
led me up the grand staircase. Tiepolo chose two scenes from the life of
Cleopatra, and there is no doubt that he could draw. In one the
voluptuous queen is dissolving a pearl in a goblet of wine; in the other
she and her infatuated Roman are about to embark in a splendid galley.
The model for the wanton queen is said to have been a gondolier's
daughter named Cristina in whom the painter found all the graces that
his brush required.

[Illustration: THE DREAM OF S. URSULA
FROM THE PAINTING BY CARPACCIO
_In the Accademia_]

The frescoes, still in fair preservation, are masterly and
aristocratic; but they have left on my mind no impressions that it is a
pleasure to revive. Brilliant execution is not enough.

Crossing the mouth of the Cannaregio we come to the Querini Palace, now
yellow, plain, and ugly. A little campiello, a tiny ugly house and a
calle, and we are opposite the Palazzo Contarini, or Lobbia, with brown
poles on which a silver heart glistens. It is a huge place, now in part
empty, with a pretty cable design at the corner. Next, a shady green
garden and an attractive little house with a tiny roof loggia and
terrace; then a yellow stucco house with a little portico under it, and
then the Palazzo Gritti, now decayed and commonplace. A little house
with a dog in relief on it and a pretty colonnade and fondamenta, and
then the Palazzo Martinengo, or Mandelli, with that very rare thing in
Venice, a public clock on the roof, and a garden.

And so we reach the shabby S. Marcuola, her campo, traghetto, and
steamer station. S. Marcuola, whose facade, having never been finished,
is most ragged and miserable, is a poor man's chur